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Milorad Pejić
KALEMEGDAN I
With the gurgling of the vine on the ramparts you don’t
hear the silence of powder magazines and dungeons,
you don’t feel the draft of corridors of long ago in whose
labyrinths only the keyholes are still roaming. I stayed there
long, imprisoned outside, looking for disguised entrances.
On old men’s benches I listened to the stone for days.
At night, when the shadows turn into chasms, and when
on the edges of lawns open wells multiply, I would step
under the dull light bulbs following the trail of a mole.
Now when my youth that I feared would pass in vain
has passed in vain, a minute point in the mountain, I’m
digging up fountains and building wells, striving toward
the same: endurance. Listening to the distance of water
I sometimes catch the murmur of the living grave, Kalemegdan.
And I think from there. From that place, through my wounds
like through the eyelets of the truck tarp during the ride,
from the darkness I look.